Comments:

1. While on the lagoon doing a seabird survey, we observed the group of brant on one of the large sand flat areas. It was an absolutely gorgeous day (60oF, wind 10 W, partly cloudy). As is typical of brant, they kept on the move as long as we were anywhere around. I'll be keeping a close look out for more to come in. WooHoo!! Fall is here!

2. It was a sunny day! We were out in zodiaks going to round-up molting Steller's eiders to band in the lagoon. Everywhere you looked hundreds of brant were flying. There was even a whale feeding in one the lagoon channels as we boated by. After a very difficult round-up we caught 428 Steller's eiders -- 92% of them were recaptures (i.e. They already had bands.).

3. Comments:Chris and Margaret flew an aerial survey of the lagoon on 9/20/97. During the fall we keep track of the number of brant, emperor geese, Canada geese, and steller's eiders by doing aerial surveys every 2 weeks or so. We use a supercub plane which sits just two people--one behind the other and fly at about 150 - 500 feet depending on what type of birds we're looking at. Most of the brant should be here by now. Last year our peak survey was on 9/25/96 with 142,809 (give or take a few thousand) brant estimated.